At the heart of it all: a mentally ill woman and her abused child, trapped in a candy-coated world where the lines between mother and daughter, deceiver and deceived, and perpetrator and victim are blurred beyond recognition. Dreamlike pacing, disturbing imagery, and powerful acting add up to one of the strongest true-crime series since ACS: Versace this time last year. Add a predominantly female cast, writers room, and roster of directors and the show stands out among its peers even before you actually, you know, watch it.īut it’s the end result that really sinks its sugar-rotted teeth into you.

Dean contributes rigorously reported and extensively researched knowledge of the case, including interviews with several of the key players, as well as a strong sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the true-crime genre from her previous career as a critic. Antosca brings an eye for surreal horror, attention to the psychology of characters in complicated relationships, and experience behind the scenes. (Its fourth episode, which was written by Dean, airs this Wednesday.) In an arrangement Dean describes with a laugh as “unusual,” she helped adapt her own article to the screen, tapping Nick Antosca, creator of the terrifying horror-anthology series Channel Zero, to be her co-creator and co-showrunner. The same can be said about The Act, Hulu’s haunting new show about the Blanchard case based on Dean’s article and featuring without-a-net performances by Patricia Arquette and Joey King as Dee Dee and Gypsy.

But as millions of readers learned, the minds of these two women, and the story of their lives and Dee Dee’s death, were far more complicated. “Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter to Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom Murdered.” Spelled out in the headline for journalist Michelle Dean’s blockbuster BuzzFeed News article, the case of Dee Dee and Gypsy Blanchard sounds deceptively simple: a mother with Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a daughter driven to kill in order to escape the abuse, and a world fooled by the pair’s deception until it was too late.

The act true crime story